Intel Ends McAfee Brand; McAfee Couldn’t Be Happier

The McAfee brand has been a bit of a joke (albeit to different users for different reasons) for some time, so it’s no surprise that Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) is finally replacing it with the more streamlined brand Intel Security, reports Paul Lily for Maximum PC. Intel first bought McAfee for $7.68 billion in 2010.

Among techies, McAfee is simply disregarded because it’s not particularly good anti-virus software (advanced options are limited, it tends to scan and update on its own schedule and can hog system resources in the process; some users claim that uninstalling is confusing). But the company founder John McAfee, who hasn’t been involved with the software for well over a decade, has also drawn headlines for alleged hijinks in Belize.

Neither McAfee a fan of the other

He’s been accused of murder, using bath salts, and all manner of debauched behavior. McAfee (the person) says the Belize government and some financiers were out to get him, and at some point his house mysteriously burned down, so who really knows, but if you’re one of the world’s largest IT companies this isn’t the kind of stuff you really want coming up when someone does a Google search on one of your products.

McAfee (the person of dubious repute) couldn’t have been happier to hear about the end of McAfee (the unpopular anti-virus software). “Thank God. I will no longer have 2 apologise for the @McAfee software,” he said in a tweet. (h/t John Leyden at The Register), and he told the BBC that he’s glad to no longer be associated with “the worst software on the planet.”

McAfee has just 3.1% market share

McAfee Anti-Virus is the eighth most popular anti-virus program worldwide, with just 3.1% market share. Microsoft’s suite of anti-virus software, including Windows Defender and MS Security Essentials, and Avast anti-virus together control nearly half the market, with a big drop off to third place AVG (whose anti-virus software is free, though other security features are subscription based). Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has a natural advantage in this market since Windows by far the most popular PC operating system, but Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) should have a similar advantage – its chips power a large chunk of the world’s computers.